by Gordon Kent
Alan held out his hand. “Can’t deny it.”
“I heard about you.”
I heard about you. What had Djalik heard? he wondered. CVIC didn’t waste a lot of grief on flag-deck personnel. “Want some coffee, sir?”
Alan didn’t think it was right to linger in IS berthing, but he had work to do later and he had been climbing around for a while.
“Got a cup handy?”
“Oh, roger that, sir.” Djalik poured coffee into a mug from a thermos, picked up his own cup and headed toward the far hatch. “Wanna follow me, sir?” He started out. Alan took a slug before following. The coffee was rich and mellow and had just a hint of sugar. It was the best coffee he had ever tasted on shipboard.
As the hatch to berthing closed behind him and they entered a well-lit stretch of passageway, Alan caught up with Djalik.
“Great coffee.”
“Yeah, I make it myself. Brought the beans. I spent a bunch of time in Colombia, you know? They may all be drug lords, but they sure do know coffee. And you gotta keep the filters clean. The coffee in the intel center tastes like they strained it through their jockstraps.”
“I always get my coffee in the ASW module. It’s habit.” Actually, it was strategy—get your coffee in ASW and you get free, off-the-cuff ASW briefs from the experts.
“Oh. Right. Yeah, theirs isn’t so bad. I tell the peons in CVIC, keep the filters clean and I’ll be a happy guy, but they don’t get it. They’re kids.” Djalik was Alan’s age, maybe a year or two older, looked in some lights older than that. “Here we go, sir.”
Alan had forgotten the noise and the size of the ship’s laundry. He felt a little stunned. Djalik, unfazed, took charge. Djalik would take charge of anything, Alan decided, that wasn’t nailed down; he had that kind of straight-on machismo.
Djalik was staring around the chaotic space, which was more like a factory floor than the ship’s spaces Alan knew. Every section in the ship had to contribute junior enlisted people to laundry detail, and twenty men and women were at work here, even though it was the middle of the night. Djalik scanned them until he saw a small Asian kid.
“Hey, Lew!” Djalik bellowed. The kid turned and made his way quickly across the deck. As he came closer, Alan read the nametag. Lu, not Lew. Made sense. Lu looked scared—Djalik, or Alan? Officers, especially lieutenant-commanders, were rare in laundry, but, then, so were ex-SEALs.
“Hey, Lu, how’s it going? This job suck, or what? Hey, man, only one more week and you’re out of here and back in CVIC where you belong, okay? I’ve been hearing good things about you from Chief Roberts.”
“Thanks, Petty Officer Djalik. Everything is okay.” Okay was made to sound as if it meant one step up from unendurable.
“Listen, how about you help out Commander Craik, here? Some idiot forgot to pick up his laundry.” When Lu hesitated, Djalik said, “I’ll square it with the chief.”
“Can do, sir. Give it here, please.” His intonation was odd, but his English was good. Alan tried to place him.
“Malaysia?” Alan said.
Lu grinned. “Indonesia, sir.”
“Jakarta?”
“East Timor.” He continued to smile, but Alan read the silence. Another Rwanda, another Bosnia.
“Thanks for taking the laundry, Seaman Lu.”
“No problem, sir. Stateroom number?”
His laundry bag was an old one from the Jefferson, its frame numbers wrong for his new ship. Lu burrowed in a box and came out with a black magic marker and handed it over, and Alan squatted and started to black out the old numbers. Lots of numbers. A real mess.
“How about I have Lu bring your stuff up to the 0–3 level when it’s done?”
Again, Djalik had that little smile. As if he was enjoying Alan’s discomfort? “Have him bring it to CVIC, okay?”
“Sure, that’ll work.”
“I’ll send him back with an apple pie from the Dirty Shirt for the laundry guys.” A plump woman in a T-shirt went by, male eyes following her. “And women.”
Djalik grunted. “Don’t get me started on that.”
Djalik walked him back through the enlisted berthing, saying nothing, twice indicating a turn with a pointing hand, the fingers together and straight, the way a Masai points. It was like being guided through Africa in the dark. Alan wondered if the former SEAL thought of it that way. When they had reached a lighted p’way that seemed brilliant after the red-lighted sleeping spaces, Djalik pulled up by a ladder and pointed that same, straight-fingered hand up.
“Thanks a lot.” Alan held out his hand.
“No problem.” Djalik shook hands.
Alan was going to go up, but he was intrigued by that image of Djalik as a jungle guide, and he stepped back down and said, “Ever been to Africa?”
“Nah. South America, mostly. Philippines, once. You have, I hear.”
Alan dipped his head. “You hear a lot.” He tried to make it pleasant.
“I hear we’re maybe going there. Africa.”
“Well—ships are full of rumors. I wouldn’t lay out a lot for a bush jacket just yet.”
They were talking about something else, but Alan wasn’t sure what. Something between the two of them, an odd sense of speaking in code, rare enough with a stranger, more so with officer and enlisted man. It was as if they might be involved with the same woman, and just finding out about it.
“Well, thanks for the help. And the coffee.” He held out the mug.
“Any time. Sir.”
Alan went up the ladder. When he got to the top, he glanced down, and Djalik was still standing there, holding the two cups, looking after him.
A couple of days later, he found that Djalik had several years before been awarded the Silver Star for something in Colombia. Alan had one for Africa, and he thought it was that ribbon that Djalik had been looking at when he had first looked up in the enlisted berthing space. That was the possible link between them, maybe the subtext of that last conversation. Whether what Djalik was showing was rivalry or comradeship, however, he couldn’t say. Perhaps both.
Sneesen had been scheduled for duty in the laundry, but his new rating got him out of it. He was too valuable fixing things, he figured. They needed him. He hated the laundry, with its noise and its heat. Too many mud-people, too, even though that was where they belonged, the sort of work they were born to do. But white men shouldn’t have to work alongside them.
The only bad thing now was that Chief Borne was gone. They said he’d gone to the Rangoon because they needed somebody experienced on the flight deck. He’d left Sneesen a note: “The Lord has sent me where he needs me more. Do the Lord’s work.”
It scared Sneesen that he would have to do that work alone.
19
October
IVI, suburban Maryland.
Abe Peretz was on his two-week Reserve duty at IVI. He had followed up on Rose’s long-ago suggestion and got himself assigned there, in good part because she was there. Like all Alan’s friends, he enjoyed the company of Alan’s wife. IVI itself “tickled” him, to use the word with which he described it to his own wife, Bea, after the first day. It was so focused, so gung-ho, so high-tech; after his own very staid department in the Hoover Building, it was almost frantic.
Rose was away in Naples on the Monday when he reported. She got back Tuesday afternoon, and for the rest of the week, Peretz and Rose met every morning for coffee. The second morning, he asked her what Peacemaker’s offensive capability was.
“Offensive? Like, in weapon?”
“Yeah, offensive, as in offensive.”
“Zero. Peacemaker’s a short-term surveillance and comm satellite.”
“Yeah, I read the PR handout.” Peretz had a constantly amused eye and an ironic manner, both of which had played a part in his early exit from the Navy. Now, he fixed the eye on Rose and said, “You believe everything you read, Pollyanna?”
“I’m too busy to do otherwise, Abe. What’s on your mind?”
/> “You buy your food at the company store, too?”
“Just what’s that supposed to mean?”
Peretz cocked his head, grinned; her voice was more defensive than he had expected. Peretz believed that people should be amused by the organizations they worked for, not impressed. “I mean, you kind of buy into the party line here, don’t you?”
“Look, Abe, I’m real busy. I don’t waste my time asking no-go questions. What are you trying to say?”
“My, my.” Peretz smiled at her again. He tried to make the smile paternal, because he was ten years older and she was his friend’s wife. “My, my. Well. What I was trying to say, Commander, is that for a nonoffensive device, Peacemaker has me collating an awful lot of targeting data. You, know, targeting—as in drop bomb, go boom?”
“Peacemaker isn’t big enough to carry bombs. Sorry, you’re making things up. Look, this is a great place to work; the general’s a standup guy with a great idea and a lot of hustle; I’m making points on the way to being an astronaut. Don’t ask dumb questions, okay?”
“Why are you so defensive?”
“I’m not defensive! I just—” She ran her hands through her abundant black hair. “I’m up to my ass in work, Abe. Okay?”
He smiled again. “‘Don’t bother my pretty little head about it?’”
She started to get angry then, caught herself and said instead, “How does Bea put up with you?”
As she walked away, she was thinking that now there were two people on her case about Peacemaker, first Valdez and now Abe Peretz! It didn’t occur to her to ask if they might be right. In Rose Craik’s world, if you did your job well, there wasn’t time to ask if the kooks were right.
Next day, Abe joked around the subject and the tone between them was light, although he did say quietly, “Sure is a heap a target data, Miz Scarlett,” as they parted. On the Friday morning, however, he was frowning as he carried his coffee over to her table. He put the cup down and sat quietly, all but ignoring her greeting, and then he said without irony or humor, “Rose, I’m not kidding this time. What’s going on with this project?”
“Abe, for God’s sake—”
“No, I’m serious, Rose, you’re not going to frown me down. There’s something screwy here. I’m doing PDAs—Projected Damage Assessments—on damage zone restrictions that don’t match any bomb I know. And with virtually no collateral damage, as if this is pinpoint targeting of something low-yield, except at the point of impact. Tell me that part’s so classified I should shut up, and I will. Hmm?”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, that’s not good enough. I mean, tell me you know what’s going on and it’s okay and I don’t need to know.”
She looked grim, and he knew she was again ready to be angry. She liked Peacemaker, he realized, somehow identified with it, perhaps because she had an important role in it and it was a step up for her. She was going to say something ugly, he thought, when he saw her eyes flick over his shoulder at something, somebody beyond him, and she said, “The very guy who can straighten you out, thank God! Ray—hey, Ray—come on over—!”
She introduced a tall, somber man as Ray Suter. He was also ex-Navy, she explained, but a permanent fixture at IVI. “Ray,” she said, “explain to this eager beaver that Peacemaker is exactly what we say it is, will you? Tell him that what he sees is what he gets? He’s driving me nuts.”
“What seems to be the trouble?”
Peretz was ready to dislike Ray Suter. He didn’t like having his time with Rose interrupted; he didn’t like Suter’s almost patronizing tone or a sense, maybe because he had sat on Rose’s side of the table, just a little too close to her, that he somehow claimed Rose. “Only some of the stuff I’m working on.” His tone minimized it. “Seems kind of bang-bang.”
“Bang-bang?” Suter made it sound like a child’s prattle.
“Oh, he means the surveillance plan is full of targeting data that we got from Touhey’s Air Force buddies,” Rose said. Her head was down and one hand was shaking out her hair. “Abe thinks it’s offensive stuff.”
“Offensive?” Suter said in the same tone.
“Yeah, as in ‘offensive.’” Peretz cocked his head. “You understand ‘offensive’—like ‘offensive manner’? Or offensive weapon?”
Suter’s face flushed. He was one of those people, Peretz saw, who come on very strong and then back off as soon as they’re challenged—but not for long. Not somebody he’d like to know any better, he decided.
Now, in a milder tone, Suter said, “Peacemaker’s strictly an intelligence project, I can assure you of that. No question. I have access to elements of the project that don’t impact Rose, and I can tell you absolutely that there’s nothing offensive there. What we’re keeping compartmentalized is tech data, especially some of the computer and missile details, that are really, really sensitive in today’s world picture. If you’d like more reassurance, Mister Peretz, I can set up an interview with Colonel Han, who’s our honcho on the big picture.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to meet a honcho, especially one on the big picture. But, no, I’ll take your word for it.” Peretz flashed a smile. Suter did not return it.
“We don’t want anybody asking the wrong questions,” Suter said. “We certainly wouldn’t want you expressing those questions outside these walls.”
Peretz stopped smiling. He began to gather up his things. “I know how security works. Any doubts I have, I’ll express here or nowhere.” He grinned at Rose. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She patted his hand. “Just remember, I’m too busy to listen.”
Peretz laughed and went back to work. He thought that was the end of it.
At sea.
Alan had started a letter to Rose three times and not got to finish it. It began, “Only a week since I got here and it seems a month! I’ve been going so hard I—” Then somebody had called him into ASW, and when he next looked at the letter it had been two days since he had written the first sentence. He finished the sentence and added a couple more about Rafe and the admiral and the food, and then he had to go; he left the letter on his desk, where he could finish it that night.
Five days later, he got back to it. It seemed callous, letting it lie there; he missed her, how come he couldn’t find the time to tell her so? Guilty, he sat down and wrote for twenty minutes—the laundry story; Kravitz, who was really working out well despite still having to stand watches in ship’s comm; his first dinner in the flag wardroom—He stopped and looked at his watch.
“Time to go! I love you! Write! More later!”
He stuffed it in an envelope as he ran to flag ops, intending to post it that day.
Two days later, he found it under a pile of pubs.
Sarajevo.
To Dukas in Sarajevo, the worlds of O’Neill and Alan Craik and the Navy were dim. He wrote a few letters, but he was not really a letter-writing man; aside from short notes to Rose Craik, he settled for picture postcards with ten or a dozen words scrawled on them—“Still here, everything okay!” The postcards showed the new Sarajevo and were a credit to entrepreneurship, color photos of the ruined library, bomb damage in the old market, rebuilding in Nova Sarajevo, and old faithfuls like the Olympic Mountain. The postcards were an afterthought, however; all his concentration was on the frustration of hunting war criminals where many of them lived openly but were beyond his reach.
He remembered the story that Al Craik had told him about Kenyans and Italians in Bosnia, walking around in a perpetual rage because they couldn’t do anything against an enemy that openly mocked them. He and his people were like that. The failure in the French zone had bruised their morale. Two of them had quit, gone back to police work in their countries, where the problems were the same but there were lots of other cops to make you feel good about things.
“We got to have more intelligence,” he told Pigoreau. “Put out more money for snitches. I’ll get it someplace.”
“I handle it? My way?” Pigoreau di
dn’t believe in the niceties of Agency-style espionage, the things O’Neill had learned at the Ranch—recruitment, seduction, training, comm plans—but in old-fashioned bribery.
“Any way that works.”
Mrs Obren remained his best source. She sent him rumors, gossip, occasional snippets about an identified name on his list that might one day lead to an arrest.
Washington.
Suter walked toward the door of the conference suite where the Ops/Plans Committee were meeting, wishing that he weren’t there but was instead out at IVI, where his real life now seemed to be. He enjoyed it, of course, because Rose was there, Rose now a fixture in his mental world, on the way to becoming an obsession; but he enjoyed it, too, simply as itself—the park-like campus, the atmosphere, Touhey—and the project, which still excited him. But he needed to talk to Shreed, and Shreed was inside there, sitting through one of the seemingly interminable meetings that took up most of his days. Shreed had wanted to be Deputy Director for Ops/Plans but would not be, or so he said; how did he know? You knew those things, Suter supposed. Or maybe they told you outright—some enemy at your level or just above, telling you with relish that he or she knew for a fact that you’d never have your heart’s desire.
The door opened, held by a guard, and through it Suter could see a male receptionist and half a dozen people with attachés and notepads, a few of them with obvious aides, hangers-on, lingering close as if it might be necessary to wipe the great one’s nose or bottom, as if they tended small but very rich children. As he looked, Shreed’s canes hove into view, first the tips, aslant like silver arrows, then, as the canes rose to vertical, the fierce face and en brosse hair. Shreed looked down at the floor as he planned his next assault on gravity, picked his spot and swung forward. Somebody spoke to him from the group but he made no acknowledgment, swung forward again and looked up and, seeing Suter, nodded. He placed the canes outside the door and swung through.
“Something’s come up,” Suter said.
“Fucking idiots,” Shreed grated. He was in either physical or intellectual pain, perhaps both; his face was contorted. He was on his way to another meeting halfway across the building and up another floor. Suter knew his schedule, was there because this was the only time to catch him. He started along the corridor, but Shreed swung himself against the wall, reaching out for Suter, hissing, “I’m sick of fools.”